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proximoception) wrote2017-02-11 12:16 am
proximoception) wrote2017-02-11 12:16 am
(no subject)
More on Legion, about the aims of which I'm a lot more confident after thinking about it more.
So as I mentioned in the comment on the last one the likely place this is going is likening schizophrenics to God, since both can never be sure if the reality they observe is in fact a matter separate from their own person or merely a creation of their unconscious. (Theists can argue that God must be omniscient to officially be God, and that's fine, but the point is from GOD's perspective there can be no knowing that he is, since unconscious processes within God might be capable of tossing around the stone that is his conscious portion. A consciousness may not have full knowledge of itself even if it thinks it does, the existence of human mental disturbance proves, and since God must be a consciousness ... there you have it.) The show won't dwell long on that impasse, though. It's using superhero tropes to wade the protagonist into full understanding of his dilemma, but is also presumably setting up an analogy between the failure of schizophrenics to stay on their meds and the sorts of social outcasts who become deeply attracted to power fantasies (e.g. readers of superhero comics) that replace the world with one where their oddity is transformed into some sort of positive distinction. The female lead's speech to the psychiatrist (which I kind of suspect we'll hear again, reassigned to the male lead) says as much. It's nice to think you're exceptional rather than exceptionally challenged, but not on balance helpful if thinking that also stops you from coping with your challenges (taking antipsychotics, say, or seeing a grownup movie for a change).
I suspect the backstory to this series is that Hawley was approached about developing a superhero story, burst out laughing at how little he wanted to do that, then thought about why he didn't want to do that, then decided to make a superhero story explaining why he rejects superhero stories. And recalled or came upon the character Legion, who's of course named after the series of personal demons that Jesus kicks out of a possessed person. Demons that presumably indicste both schizophrenia (what with the voices) and multiple personality disorder, but that also remind us of how an I becomes a We the second there's stuff going on in a mind that that mind is not controlling. And, once that stowaway is noticed, one realizes there may never be a way to know if there are more. If the mind is not its own boss, who is?
Things to note:
A. The opening montage entirely fits the development of a paranoid schizophrenic and features no magic powers.
B. When the powers do come they hit at a point where full schizophrenia often does: c. 20, maybe after realizing that entering adulthood has not normalized one's adjustment troubles, which is a hell of a stress multiplier. The lead's break comes after his university studies and relationship start falling apart - also common.
C. Not coincidentally, this is also the point by which you've either put away most of your childish things or committed to integrating escapism into your adult leisure time - the devoted World of Warcraft types. I assume the CGI progress at the end was supposed to look like a video game. Seems like ever-present buddy Aubrey Plaza acts a lot more like a nerd than a crazy person.
D. The plot proper starts right after he announces to his sister that something new needs to happen. This is a common justification for bipolars to drop their meds, but not unheard of for other sorts of mentally people, even schizophrenics. The boringness of whatever lonely routine they've settled into presumably feels like the main reason for a social outcast to embrace fantasies. No one tends to say, "Gee, I wish I had more power." It's too on the nose. The weird discrepancy between the phrase "role playing game" and what it mostly represents seems relevant here - why's it always that particular sort of role? The hero's. Not the role of paperboy or nurse. Muscles, importance, magic, nobody tellin' you nuttin'.
E. Hope to hell this doesn't mean the Devil with Yellow Eyes is how the representative fantasy addict fears they actually look and are, but I bet that's its function here. Like the gluttony figure from Se7en, pretty much. Near-boneless, obese, slack-expressioned, a living bedsore.
I remember Legion because I read a couple dozen X-Men issues at 10 or 11 and he was in one. One can see what would have caught Hawley's attention. He had multiple personalities and endless power, and had gone mad so become a danger to all of reality. Almost does read like a worry about overfantasizing popping up within the fantasies of a dreamer of new magic powers one could have: I could fly! I could turn rocks into clouds! I could shoot lava from my feet! Or all at once! Yes, my power would be Every Power! But if I have every power ... can have anything I want ... make everyone do what I want and love me ... it would be too close to what I'm doing now, making uo whatever I wish. Making up just one thing you wish is some bizarre deal with the world, I guess - if I could fly there would be heavy responsibilities entailed and I would attract the attention of the government or of bad flying people, therefore would pay a price, therefore I have a sort of permission to do it. But Every Power just makes me realize how pathetic this endeavor is, makes me say, on the nose, that I am powerless. To make it feel real I'd have to ignore more and more of reality's texture. Meaning mine would soon have none, since life is the one available model.
Powers of his we witness: moving things around mentally, making walls where there were no walls, getting rid of doors where there were doors, making people all silently do what one wishes (walking to their rooms and staying put, with the one exception). (Walking around inside one's own memory is someone else's power being exercised on him, I assume.) Re. the mind control, why would "she" (since she's likely just one of his masks) make herself do exactly what the others did? Because she wanted to be alone that way (her desert island wish) and it just projected outward onto everyone nearby? But screaming for help suggests she didn't want it to that degree. So the power gives one what one thinks one wants without one being conscious of it, like with the attacking pen. These powers rob reality of plausibility and others of personality.
F. Her strange tone in the "I love you" scene is probably reflective of this depersonalization, this reduction to a prescribed role.
G. There's a couple pointed "what if he's just hallucinating this" moments: near the end when he asks if he's still in the hospital, most obviously; when the girl opens the door to his bedroom and is then immediateky at his bedside without our having seen any feet touch the ground. That one's about her, the later one's about everything that's happening, suggesting that once you're dreaming up girlfriends (who you unfortunately cannot touch HINT HINT) things will go downhill rapidly. Literally downhill in this man's case, what with the ending.
H. When the girl's trading places power wears off (where he controls everything she says and does HINT HINT) he comes to where her body would plausibly be, but not where his own would, since it was stuck back in his room. The mind switch becomes a body switch, inexplicably. Consistency doesn't have to happen with magic power fantasies - you can declare two and two are five - but absolutely matters for believing in them. This mistake is fine only because he doesn't notice it.
I. His memory correction of the investigator into Jean Smart suggests details can be changed retroactively. But as soon as one detail can, why not more? The more one does, the less one can feel any of this is real. But the problem with thst parsimony is that to have even done it once proves it might not be.
So what's the Calvino connection? Is Invisible Cities about fantasizing, on some level? Or is If on a Winter's Night a Traveler being alluded to, what with Marana's attempts to undermine a series of novels (many of them genre, thus to some degree escapist) being read by the narrator(s). Some buried acknowledgement of the cruelty of the present enterprise, since many will doubtless tune into Legion to see a superhero show?
So as I mentioned in the comment on the last one the likely place this is going is likening schizophrenics to God, since both can never be sure if the reality they observe is in fact a matter separate from their own person or merely a creation of their unconscious. (Theists can argue that God must be omniscient to officially be God, and that's fine, but the point is from GOD's perspective there can be no knowing that he is, since unconscious processes within God might be capable of tossing around the stone that is his conscious portion. A consciousness may not have full knowledge of itself even if it thinks it does, the existence of human mental disturbance proves, and since God must be a consciousness ... there you have it.) The show won't dwell long on that impasse, though. It's using superhero tropes to wade the protagonist into full understanding of his dilemma, but is also presumably setting up an analogy between the failure of schizophrenics to stay on their meds and the sorts of social outcasts who become deeply attracted to power fantasies (e.g. readers of superhero comics) that replace the world with one where their oddity is transformed into some sort of positive distinction. The female lead's speech to the psychiatrist (which I kind of suspect we'll hear again, reassigned to the male lead) says as much. It's nice to think you're exceptional rather than exceptionally challenged, but not on balance helpful if thinking that also stops you from coping with your challenges (taking antipsychotics, say, or seeing a grownup movie for a change).
I suspect the backstory to this series is that Hawley was approached about developing a superhero story, burst out laughing at how little he wanted to do that, then thought about why he didn't want to do that, then decided to make a superhero story explaining why he rejects superhero stories. And recalled or came upon the character Legion, who's of course named after the series of personal demons that Jesus kicks out of a possessed person. Demons that presumably indicste both schizophrenia (what with the voices) and multiple personality disorder, but that also remind us of how an I becomes a We the second there's stuff going on in a mind that that mind is not controlling. And, once that stowaway is noticed, one realizes there may never be a way to know if there are more. If the mind is not its own boss, who is?
Things to note:
A. The opening montage entirely fits the development of a paranoid schizophrenic and features no magic powers.
B. When the powers do come they hit at a point where full schizophrenia often does: c. 20, maybe after realizing that entering adulthood has not normalized one's adjustment troubles, which is a hell of a stress multiplier. The lead's break comes after his university studies and relationship start falling apart - also common.
C. Not coincidentally, this is also the point by which you've either put away most of your childish things or committed to integrating escapism into your adult leisure time - the devoted World of Warcraft types. I assume the CGI progress at the end was supposed to look like a video game. Seems like ever-present buddy Aubrey Plaza acts a lot more like a nerd than a crazy person.
D. The plot proper starts right after he announces to his sister that something new needs to happen. This is a common justification for bipolars to drop their meds, but not unheard of for other sorts of mentally people, even schizophrenics. The boringness of whatever lonely routine they've settled into presumably feels like the main reason for a social outcast to embrace fantasies. No one tends to say, "Gee, I wish I had more power." It's too on the nose. The weird discrepancy between the phrase "role playing game" and what it mostly represents seems relevant here - why's it always that particular sort of role? The hero's. Not the role of paperboy or nurse. Muscles, importance, magic, nobody tellin' you nuttin'.
E. Hope to hell this doesn't mean the Devil with Yellow Eyes is how the representative fantasy addict fears they actually look and are, but I bet that's its function here. Like the gluttony figure from Se7en, pretty much. Near-boneless, obese, slack-expressioned, a living bedsore.
I remember Legion because I read a couple dozen X-Men issues at 10 or 11 and he was in one. One can see what would have caught Hawley's attention. He had multiple personalities and endless power, and had gone mad so become a danger to all of reality. Almost does read like a worry about overfantasizing popping up within the fantasies of a dreamer of new magic powers one could have: I could fly! I could turn rocks into clouds! I could shoot lava from my feet! Or all at once! Yes, my power would be Every Power! But if I have every power ... can have anything I want ... make everyone do what I want and love me ... it would be too close to what I'm doing now, making uo whatever I wish. Making up just one thing you wish is some bizarre deal with the world, I guess - if I could fly there would be heavy responsibilities entailed and I would attract the attention of the government or of bad flying people, therefore would pay a price, therefore I have a sort of permission to do it. But Every Power just makes me realize how pathetic this endeavor is, makes me say, on the nose, that I am powerless. To make it feel real I'd have to ignore more and more of reality's texture. Meaning mine would soon have none, since life is the one available model.
Powers of his we witness: moving things around mentally, making walls where there were no walls, getting rid of doors where there were doors, making people all silently do what one wishes (walking to their rooms and staying put, with the one exception). (Walking around inside one's own memory is someone else's power being exercised on him, I assume.) Re. the mind control, why would "she" (since she's likely just one of his masks) make herself do exactly what the others did? Because she wanted to be alone that way (her desert island wish) and it just projected outward onto everyone nearby? But screaming for help suggests she didn't want it to that degree. So the power gives one what one thinks one wants without one being conscious of it, like with the attacking pen. These powers rob reality of plausibility and others of personality.
F. Her strange tone in the "I love you" scene is probably reflective of this depersonalization, this reduction to a prescribed role.
G. There's a couple pointed "what if he's just hallucinating this" moments: near the end when he asks if he's still in the hospital, most obviously; when the girl opens the door to his bedroom and is then immediateky at his bedside without our having seen any feet touch the ground. That one's about her, the later one's about everything that's happening, suggesting that once you're dreaming up girlfriends (who you unfortunately cannot touch HINT HINT) things will go downhill rapidly. Literally downhill in this man's case, what with the ending.
H. When the girl's trading places power wears off (where he controls everything she says and does HINT HINT) he comes to where her body would plausibly be, but not where his own would, since it was stuck back in his room. The mind switch becomes a body switch, inexplicably. Consistency doesn't have to happen with magic power fantasies - you can declare two and two are five - but absolutely matters for believing in them. This mistake is fine only because he doesn't notice it.
I. His memory correction of the investigator into Jean Smart suggests details can be changed retroactively. But as soon as one detail can, why not more? The more one does, the less one can feel any of this is real. But the problem with thst parsimony is that to have even done it once proves it might not be.
So what's the Calvino connection? Is Invisible Cities about fantasizing, on some level? Or is If on a Winter's Night a Traveler being alluded to, what with Marana's attempts to undermine a series of novels (many of them genre, thus to some degree escapist) being read by the narrator(s). Some buried acknowledgement of the cruelty of the present enterprise, since many will doubtless tune into Legion to see a superhero show?
no subject
Great post. So much interesting stuff going on. The brief silence of the voices at the moment he tried to hang himself. The guy in the tree? The name of the hospital.
(no subject)